Secretary

"I think I would have quite a time spanking the hell out of her," James Spader reportedly said after seeing Maggie Gyllenhaal's audition tape for Secretary, a movie about the outer limits of office politics. And I suppose it's a tribute to Steven Shainberg's deep, dark comedy that both actors ' Spader the veteran, Gyllenhaal the ingÃnue ' seem to be having the time of their lives. Spader plays a sadistic yet needy lawyer who runs through secretaries so fast he never bothers to cancel his Help Wanted ad. And Gyllenhaal plays a masochistic young woman fresh out of a mental institution who could really use that spanking. Together, they're a mismatch made in heaven, he as the reluctant master, she as the more-than-willing slave.

Adult entertainment at its most rarefied, Secretary may offend some, so pointedly does it eroticize the power imbalance between a male boss and a female employee. But the movie asks us to remember that one woman's sexual harassment is another woman's sexual fulfillment. And the secretary's home life ' trapped in a family that treats her like a basket case ' is so miserable that anything is an improvement as long as it gets her out of the house. Adapting a Mary Gaitskill short story, Shainberg structures the movie like an extended S&M scenario; even the dialogue has the stilted lilt of bad porno. But hey, whatever it takes for these two lonely people to find each other across deep chasms of pain.